The Code is divided between two parts. The first part says using someone else’s work without attribution –whether deliberately or thoughtlessly – is serious ethical breach. However, it adds, borrowing ideas from elsewhere is considered to be fair journalistic practice. The second part of the code says words directly quoted from sources other than the writer’s own reporting should be attributed. In general, it explains, when other work is used as source of ideas for stylistic inspiration the final result must be clearly different from the original work of the reporter.
Apart from students and academics, journalists are the only people who almost on a daily basis are engaged in reporting and interpreting ideas that are not originally their own. In op-ed pages these ideas form the nucleus of discussion, news backgrounds, and analyses as well as commentaries. Giving credit where it is due is therefore one of the most important pillars of good journalism. Reading weekend papers in Kenya would make anyone think journalists in Kenya are full of new ideas. This does not mean that journalism in this country is made up of great thinkers full of original ideas put across through extremely flowery language which, strangely, very often resembles that of either great writers of the past or contemporary ones who have become famous through their prolific pens.
Maybe one of the best guidelines on how to avoid plagiarism is provided by Indiana University’s writing tutorial service which advises writers through the Internet to always acknowledge other people’s ideas, opinions and theories. The guidelines suggest that any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings that are not common knowledge should be credited. It further suggests that quotation of another person’s or written words; or paraphrases of another person’s spoken or written words should also be given credit.
May be the best way to illustrate the difference between unacceptable paraphrasing which amounts to plagiarism and acceptable usage of other people’s ideas in a proper paraphrased manner is to show a specific example. In the Saturday 20th September , 2003 issue of The Standard the following article by your truly was published:
As the hapless victim of a murderer’s bullet, Dr. Odhiambo Mbai has inadvertently united the country against tribal chauvinists. Now the people are determined to change the constitution that allows an individual to become a demigod who does whatever he wants. The public rage that was ignited by Mbai’s death may have united the rift between a few well known demagogic hecklers who have all the time wanted to stop any discussion about presidential powers and the majority of Kenyan who, more than ever before, now want Bomas II conference to go ahead. As soon as the conference resumed, the devolution of power was a major contention. President Mwai Kibaki’s dismissal of the proposal to share power represent an obstacle delegates have to overcome before they implement people’s wishes as they appear in Draft Constitution.
The following is an unacceptable paraphrasing which amounts to plagiarism:
As an unfortunate victim of killer’s weapon, Dr. Odhiambo Mbai, ha unintentionally brought the country together against tribal leaders. Now Kenyans have made up their minds to change the constitution which promotes one person to become all-powerful, doing whatever he likes. The people’s anger started by Mbai’s death could have united the differences between a few well known political agitators who have always desired to end any talks about presidential powers and the largest number of Kenyans who, as always, now want Bomas II meeting to go ahead. As soon as the meeting commenced, the devolution of powers was a major topic. President Mwai Kibak’s rejection of the idea to share powers is a major problem delegates have to consider before they implement wananchi’s desires as reflected in the Draft Constitution.
And the following is the acceptable form of quotations and paraphrasing:
According to The Standard columnist Joe Kadhi, Dr. Odhiambo Mbai was the hapless victim of a murderer’s bullet who “has inadvertently united the country against tribal chauvinists.” Claiming that the people (of Kenya) are determined to change the constitution that allows an individual to become a demigod who does whatever he wants he asserts that the public rage that “ was ignited by Mbai’s death may have widened the rift between a few well known demagogic hecklers who have all the time wanted to stop any discussion about presidential powers and the majority of Kenyans who , more than ever before , now want Bomas II conference to go ahead” As soon as the conference resumed, he says, the devolution of power was a major contention . President Mwai Kibaki’s dismissal of the proposal to share power represented an obstacle delegates had to overcome before they implemented people’s wishes as they appeared in Draft Constitution. (KADHI)
Because the writer accurately quotes the original article by Joe Kadhi then his paraphrasing is acceptable. Without failure the writer gives credit to the original author and by direct quotes shows the parts he is reproducing verbatim. According to Bruce H. Leland, Journalism professor at Western Illinois University, plagiarism is a perennial temptation for students and an eternal challenge for teachers; but I would add that it is a greater challenge to journalists who address millions of educated readers, listeners and viewers who are at any given time in a position to recognize work that is not original.
As the number of educated Kenyans increases, plagiarism detection net spreads on an increasingly large area all the time making unethical journalist plagiarizing other people’s work even more vulnerable. Almost spontaneously, readers, viewers and listeners have become plagiarism policemen and women who conduct on the spot surveillance as they read their daily papers, listen to programmes of the radio and watch TV.
Writing for the Journal of Information Ethics, Vol.3, No., fall 1994, Brian Martin of the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, says among intellectuals, plagiarism is normally treated as sinful offence but he admits that in spite of its seriousness it is extremely widespread. Undoubtedly, he says, no more than a small fraction of student plagiarism is ever detected and, of that which is detected, serious penalty are imposed on only a minority of offenders. “It is safe to say if rules against cheating were able to be strictly and effectively enforced, failure rates would skyrocket,” he says.
In Kenyan journalism the most obvious and provable cases of plagiarism takes place when journalists copy phrases and even passages of well known published works. The alternative media does not even make an effort anything they plagiaries from plagiarized phrases used in the mainstream media.
When some words are changed the final outcome is what Martin calls paraphrasing plagiarism. What is laughable about plagiarism in Kenyan journalism is when journalists take a whole story from an international or KNA wire copy and run them with their own by-lines which amounts to what Martin calls plagiarism of authorship. When original stories appear in rival newspapers with proper attribution of the origin of the story then it becomes quite clear which of the stories is authentic. This is what Martin also calls word-for-word plagiarism. Plagiarism of words, phrases and other forms of sentence structure can easily be detected.
A more difficult form of plagiarism to detect is that of ideas. Some ideas are so original that copying them without citation makes the plagiarizer look either like a genius or an extremely well read person, the argument that no one has the monopoly of ideas notwithstanding. Great minds may indeed think alike but the manner of expressing some ideas can be so particularly unique that an expression made by wordsmiths for the first time could have that exceptional ability to grow into a common way of everyday expression. The best example I can think of is that of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s visit to South Africa in early 1960s when he said “The wind of change is blowing through the continent of Africa.” Since then a lot of winds of change have blown through many pens of journalists writing on many different issues.
“The standard view on plagiarism, subscribed to by most intellectuals, is that plagiarism is a serious offence against scholarship and should be condemned and penalized. It is strongly discouraged among students,” says Martin. Among journalists it can hardly be said to be rare Import and some highly respected writers have been accused of plagiarizing. Among them are Dr. Martin Luther King and the famous writer of Malcolm X, Alex Haley.
In Kenya ghost writing is only acceptable among important politicians who always read speeches written by other people. Journalists report these speeches without even bothering to find out who actually wrote them. This in fact is commonplace throughout the world cutting across all sorts of leaders from monarchs to powerful politicians. Answers given by Kenyan Minister in Parliament are never written by them yet next day’s papers quote ministers as originators of both ideas and words they read. The phenomenon so widely accepted becomes unprofessional when repeated by journalists whose most important tools include words.
The credit given to Minister for what they say in public often belongs to some junior civil servants with the ability to write well. That is the skill journalists are proud of and publicly tell the world when they put pen to paper. Martin calls the type of plagiarism repeated daily by Kenyan Ministers in our Parliament “Institutionalized Plagiarism”. But the type practiced by journalists is referred by him as “Competitive Plagiarism”. Politicians plagiarize all the time. They hardly read in public what they have actually written.
In 1987 an American presidential aspirant, Joseph R. Biden, dropped out of the race after being accused of plagiarizing Robert Kennedy. But what Biden was plagiarizing was not originally written by Robert Kennedy. It was written by Kennedy speechwriter Walisky. Yet Kennedy was never accused of plagiarism (MARTIN 1994)
In Kenya both institutionalized and competitive plagiarisms exist. Journalists engage in competitive plagiarism and to a certain extent they are also victims of institutionalized plagiarism. When they use speeches by Ministers they are victims of institutionalized plagiarism. When they lift phrases from well written books they are guilty of competitive plagiarism. For many reasons competitive plagiarism seems to be more stigmatized than institutionalized plagiarism. Top among these reasons is the fact critics of plagiarism come from competitive groups and their voice is heard loudest in both academia and journalism.
Hierarchical institutions which keep institutionalized plagiarism under cover are often very powerful. They include governments, parliaments, judiciaries and significantly dominant industrialists. Spokesmen and women belonging to these institutions almost never say anything original publicly. Yet the original writers of what they say are never always easily known.
Plagiarism is discussed in this chapter as a condemnable professional offence most certainly unethical; but could it also be a legal offence? Legally plagiarism is an infringement of copyright laws. In his Mass Media Law, Media Law and Ethics at the University of Washington, says news events cannot be copyrighted, but stories or broadcasts that endeavour to describe or explain these events can be copyrighted. “What is being protected is the author’s style or manner of presentation of news, he says. Similarly, he argues, facts cannot be copyrighted, but works that relate to facts can be protected as expressions. He says: “While news and facts cannot be copyrighted, anyone who attempts to present news or facts gathered by someone else as his or her own work may be guilty of breaking other laws, such as misappropriation or unfair competition.” In most cases, he says, copyrighted works are protected for a life of the author or creator plus 70 years.
In Kenya the copyrights Act (CAP 130) makes provision for copyright in literary, musical and artistic works, audio-visual works, sound recording and broadcasts. Section 7 (1) of the Act says copyright in literary, musical or artistic work or in an audio-visual work shall be the exclusive right to control the doing in Kenya of any of the following acts, namely reproduction in any material form , the distribution to the public for commercial purposes of copies by way of sale , rental , lease, hire, loan or similar arrangements , the communication to the public and broadcasting , of the whole work or a substantial part thereof either in its original form or in any other form driven from the original.
The Act lists a number of exceptions which include scientific research, private use, criticism or review or the reporting of current events. It also allows the inclusion in a collection of literary or musical works of not more than two short passages from the work in question if the collection is designed for use in a school registered under the Education Act (or any registered University) and includes an acknowledgement of the title and authorship of the work. It also allows the broadcasting of the work if the broadcast is intended to be used for purposes of systematic instructional activities.
Judicial proceedings too are allowed to make any use of copyrighted work for purposes of justice. Section 15 of the Act explains what infringements of copyrights are. In subsection 1 it says copyright shall be infringed by a person who, without the licence of the owner of the copyright (a) does, or cause to be done, an act the doing of which is controlled by the copyright or (b) imports or causes to be imported, otherwise than his private and domestic use, an article which he knows to be infringing copy. The same section explains the infringement of copyright as actionable. It further talks of the relief by way of damages and award of damages.
Looking at the copyright laws in Kenya one cannot help wondering whether or not the late Fadhili William and Daudi Kabaka are not perpetually turning in their graves because they died before taking hundreds of plagiarizers of their work to court .Together with Fadhili and Kabaka must be a huge number of great writers whose work is illegally copied constantly in Kenya newspapers with local journalists’ by-lines.
In his Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers of November 17, 2004, Robert Harris suggests there should be institutional policies with clearly defined penalties for violating anti plagiarism rules. One of the most effective methods used to unearth a plagiarized article is to make the write discuss it without looking at either notes or the published article. Editors who have mastered the art of briefing and debriefing reporters before and after assignments know how to detect and avoid plagiarism
Apart from students and academics, journalists are the only people who almost on a daily basis are engaged in reporting and interpreting ideas that are not originally their own. In op-ed pages these ideas form the nucleus of discussion, news backgrounds, and analyses as well as commentaries. Giving credit where it is due is therefore one of the most important pillars of good journalism. Reading weekend papers in Kenya would make anyone think journalists in Kenya are full of new ideas. This does not mean that journalism in this country is made up of great thinkers full of original ideas put across through extremely flowery language which, strangely, very often resembles that of either great writers of the past or contemporary ones who have become famous through their prolific pens.
Maybe one of the best guidelines on how to avoid plagiarism is provided by Indiana University’s writing tutorial service which advises writers through the Internet to always acknowledge other people’s ideas, opinions and theories. The guidelines suggest that any facts, statistics, graphs, drawings that are not common knowledge should be credited. It further suggests that quotation of another person’s or written words; or paraphrases of another person’s spoken or written words should also be given credit.
May be the best way to illustrate the difference between unacceptable paraphrasing which amounts to plagiarism and acceptable usage of other people’s ideas in a proper paraphrased manner is to show a specific example. In the Saturday 20th September , 2003 issue of The Standard the following article by your truly was published:
As the hapless victim of a murderer’s bullet, Dr. Odhiambo Mbai has inadvertently united the country against tribal chauvinists. Now the people are determined to change the constitution that allows an individual to become a demigod who does whatever he wants. The public rage that was ignited by Mbai’s death may have united the rift between a few well known demagogic hecklers who have all the time wanted to stop any discussion about presidential powers and the majority of Kenyan who, more than ever before, now want Bomas II conference to go ahead. As soon as the conference resumed, the devolution of power was a major contention. President Mwai Kibaki’s dismissal of the proposal to share power represent an obstacle delegates have to overcome before they implement people’s wishes as they appear in Draft Constitution.
The following is an unacceptable paraphrasing which amounts to plagiarism:
As an unfortunate victim of killer’s weapon, Dr. Odhiambo Mbai, ha unintentionally brought the country together against tribal leaders. Now Kenyans have made up their minds to change the constitution which promotes one person to become all-powerful, doing whatever he likes. The people’s anger started by Mbai’s death could have united the differences between a few well known political agitators who have always desired to end any talks about presidential powers and the largest number of Kenyans who, as always, now want Bomas II meeting to go ahead. As soon as the meeting commenced, the devolution of powers was a major topic. President Mwai Kibak’s rejection of the idea to share powers is a major problem delegates have to consider before they implement wananchi’s desires as reflected in the Draft Constitution.
And the following is the acceptable form of quotations and paraphrasing:
According to The Standard columnist Joe Kadhi, Dr. Odhiambo Mbai was the hapless victim of a murderer’s bullet who “has inadvertently united the country against tribal chauvinists.” Claiming that the people (of Kenya) are determined to change the constitution that allows an individual to become a demigod who does whatever he wants he asserts that the public rage that “ was ignited by Mbai’s death may have widened the rift between a few well known demagogic hecklers who have all the time wanted to stop any discussion about presidential powers and the majority of Kenyans who , more than ever before , now want Bomas II conference to go ahead” As soon as the conference resumed, he says, the devolution of power was a major contention . President Mwai Kibaki’s dismissal of the proposal to share power represented an obstacle delegates had to overcome before they implemented people’s wishes as they appeared in Draft Constitution. (KADHI)
Because the writer accurately quotes the original article by Joe Kadhi then his paraphrasing is acceptable. Without failure the writer gives credit to the original author and by direct quotes shows the parts he is reproducing verbatim. According to Bruce H. Leland, Journalism professor at Western Illinois University, plagiarism is a perennial temptation for students and an eternal challenge for teachers; but I would add that it is a greater challenge to journalists who address millions of educated readers, listeners and viewers who are at any given time in a position to recognize work that is not original.
As the number of educated Kenyans increases, plagiarism detection net spreads on an increasingly large area all the time making unethical journalist plagiarizing other people’s work even more vulnerable. Almost spontaneously, readers, viewers and listeners have become plagiarism policemen and women who conduct on the spot surveillance as they read their daily papers, listen to programmes of the radio and watch TV.
Writing for the Journal of Information Ethics, Vol.3, No., fall 1994, Brian Martin of the University of Wollongong, New South Wales, says among intellectuals, plagiarism is normally treated as sinful offence but he admits that in spite of its seriousness it is extremely widespread. Undoubtedly, he says, no more than a small fraction of student plagiarism is ever detected and, of that which is detected, serious penalty are imposed on only a minority of offenders. “It is safe to say if rules against cheating were able to be strictly and effectively enforced, failure rates would skyrocket,” he says.
In Kenyan journalism the most obvious and provable cases of plagiarism takes place when journalists copy phrases and even passages of well known published works. The alternative media does not even make an effort anything they plagiaries from plagiarized phrases used in the mainstream media.
When some words are changed the final outcome is what Martin calls paraphrasing plagiarism. What is laughable about plagiarism in Kenyan journalism is when journalists take a whole story from an international or KNA wire copy and run them with their own by-lines which amounts to what Martin calls plagiarism of authorship. When original stories appear in rival newspapers with proper attribution of the origin of the story then it becomes quite clear which of the stories is authentic. This is what Martin also calls word-for-word plagiarism. Plagiarism of words, phrases and other forms of sentence structure can easily be detected.
A more difficult form of plagiarism to detect is that of ideas. Some ideas are so original that copying them without citation makes the plagiarizer look either like a genius or an extremely well read person, the argument that no one has the monopoly of ideas notwithstanding. Great minds may indeed think alike but the manner of expressing some ideas can be so particularly unique that an expression made by wordsmiths for the first time could have that exceptional ability to grow into a common way of everyday expression. The best example I can think of is that of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s visit to South Africa in early 1960s when he said “The wind of change is blowing through the continent of Africa.” Since then a lot of winds of change have blown through many pens of journalists writing on many different issues.
“The standard view on plagiarism, subscribed to by most intellectuals, is that plagiarism is a serious offence against scholarship and should be condemned and penalized. It is strongly discouraged among students,” says Martin. Among journalists it can hardly be said to be rare Import and some highly respected writers have been accused of plagiarizing. Among them are Dr. Martin Luther King and the famous writer of Malcolm X, Alex Haley.
In Kenya ghost writing is only acceptable among important politicians who always read speeches written by other people. Journalists report these speeches without even bothering to find out who actually wrote them. This in fact is commonplace throughout the world cutting across all sorts of leaders from monarchs to powerful politicians. Answers given by Kenyan Minister in Parliament are never written by them yet next day’s papers quote ministers as originators of both ideas and words they read. The phenomenon so widely accepted becomes unprofessional when repeated by journalists whose most important tools include words.
The credit given to Minister for what they say in public often belongs to some junior civil servants with the ability to write well. That is the skill journalists are proud of and publicly tell the world when they put pen to paper. Martin calls the type of plagiarism repeated daily by Kenyan Ministers in our Parliament “Institutionalized Plagiarism”. But the type practiced by journalists is referred by him as “Competitive Plagiarism”. Politicians plagiarize all the time. They hardly read in public what they have actually written.
In 1987 an American presidential aspirant, Joseph R. Biden, dropped out of the race after being accused of plagiarizing Robert Kennedy. But what Biden was plagiarizing was not originally written by Robert Kennedy. It was written by Kennedy speechwriter Walisky. Yet Kennedy was never accused of plagiarism (MARTIN 1994)
In Kenya both institutionalized and competitive plagiarisms exist. Journalists engage in competitive plagiarism and to a certain extent they are also victims of institutionalized plagiarism. When they use speeches by Ministers they are victims of institutionalized plagiarism. When they lift phrases from well written books they are guilty of competitive plagiarism. For many reasons competitive plagiarism seems to be more stigmatized than institutionalized plagiarism. Top among these reasons is the fact critics of plagiarism come from competitive groups and their voice is heard loudest in both academia and journalism.
Hierarchical institutions which keep institutionalized plagiarism under cover are often very powerful. They include governments, parliaments, judiciaries and significantly dominant industrialists. Spokesmen and women belonging to these institutions almost never say anything original publicly. Yet the original writers of what they say are never always easily known.
Plagiarism is discussed in this chapter as a condemnable professional offence most certainly unethical; but could it also be a legal offence? Legally plagiarism is an infringement of copyright laws. In his Mass Media Law, Media Law and Ethics at the University of Washington, says news events cannot be copyrighted, but stories or broadcasts that endeavour to describe or explain these events can be copyrighted. “What is being protected is the author’s style or manner of presentation of news, he says. Similarly, he argues, facts cannot be copyrighted, but works that relate to facts can be protected as expressions. He says: “While news and facts cannot be copyrighted, anyone who attempts to present news or facts gathered by someone else as his or her own work may be guilty of breaking other laws, such as misappropriation or unfair competition.” In most cases, he says, copyrighted works are protected for a life of the author or creator plus 70 years.
In Kenya the copyrights Act (CAP 130) makes provision for copyright in literary, musical and artistic works, audio-visual works, sound recording and broadcasts. Section 7 (1) of the Act says copyright in literary, musical or artistic work or in an audio-visual work shall be the exclusive right to control the doing in Kenya of any of the following acts, namely reproduction in any material form , the distribution to the public for commercial purposes of copies by way of sale , rental , lease, hire, loan or similar arrangements , the communication to the public and broadcasting , of the whole work or a substantial part thereof either in its original form or in any other form driven from the original.
The Act lists a number of exceptions which include scientific research, private use, criticism or review or the reporting of current events. It also allows the inclusion in a collection of literary or musical works of not more than two short passages from the work in question if the collection is designed for use in a school registered under the Education Act (or any registered University) and includes an acknowledgement of the title and authorship of the work. It also allows the broadcasting of the work if the broadcast is intended to be used for purposes of systematic instructional activities.
Judicial proceedings too are allowed to make any use of copyrighted work for purposes of justice. Section 15 of the Act explains what infringements of copyrights are. In subsection 1 it says copyright shall be infringed by a person who, without the licence of the owner of the copyright (a) does, or cause to be done, an act the doing of which is controlled by the copyright or (b) imports or causes to be imported, otherwise than his private and domestic use, an article which he knows to be infringing copy. The same section explains the infringement of copyright as actionable. It further talks of the relief by way of damages and award of damages.
Looking at the copyright laws in Kenya one cannot help wondering whether or not the late Fadhili William and Daudi Kabaka are not perpetually turning in their graves because they died before taking hundreds of plagiarizers of their work to court .Together with Fadhili and Kabaka must be a huge number of great writers whose work is illegally copied constantly in Kenya newspapers with local journalists’ by-lines.
In his Anti-Plagiarism Strategies for Research Papers of November 17, 2004, Robert Harris suggests there should be institutional policies with clearly defined penalties for violating anti plagiarism rules. One of the most effective methods used to unearth a plagiarized article is to make the write discuss it without looking at either notes or the published article. Editors who have mastered the art of briefing and debriefing reporters before and after assignments know how to detect and avoid plagiarism
1 comment:
Tobacco use is widespread. That does not disguise the fact that it is harmful to human health. Plagiarism may be pervasive in journalism, academia and research. That does not make it acceptable in any way. It is worthwhile that Joe Kadhi has discussed this issue in the reporting of news. The reference or argument about government officials is shallow, however, because it is universally known that presidents, celebrities and dignataries do not write their own speeches or other public relations material. That is a separate realm of communications and information sharing that follows its own rules of order so to speak.
As Mr Kadhi suggests, there are degrees of plagiarism. Ignorance is not a defense, and education can stem the problem. It all boils down to integrity and ethics.
Students could probably greatly benefit from numerous exercises in paraphrasing, precis (summary) writing and research writing, as well as critical writing and logical presentation.
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